Midwives - Sex~Kitten.net

I can't remember the last time I finished a book and actually trembled--yes, I am trembling now in awe of this book.

Midwives is a story told by a woman of her mother, a midwife charged and prosecuted for manslaughter after performing an emergency C-section on a dead woman to save the baby. Not since To Kill a Mockingbird have I seen this done: a complex, suspenseful tale told from the memories of a grown woman with the genuine voice of a girl witnessing her family tossed and tangled by a courtroom drama. The narrative maintains the maturity and depth of a grown-up where needed while achieving the fresh spark of innocence, bewilderment and adolescent self-involvement of a child.

Connie and her mother may be the most unforgettable female characters I have read since Scout Finch and Scarlett O'Hara. But unlike Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell who wrote those classic girls, the author of Midwives, Chris Bohjalian, is a man.

Okay, so if it isn't impressive enough that a man could create such authentic and compelling female characters in such depth that I know and love them like my own sisters, consider the subject matter of this book! Not only did he nail down tight the attitudes and concerns of a teenaged girl--starting her period, kissing and making out with her first boyfriend, babysitting, etc.--but he submerged himself intimately in the most feminine aspects of life--pregnancy and childbirth--and came up dripping with amniotic fluid and glowing with estrogen.

The actual childbirth/surgery scene is conveyed through Connie's memory of testimony given in court and things she overheard her mother say about the tragic event, yet it is portrayed with vivid intensity. As a writer, I know this is extremely difficult to do without "cheating." What I mean is, when you write a dramatic scene described by a character (narrator) who wasn't there, it's hard to make the scene real enough so that the reader feels like she's there. You risk cheating--telling details the character couldn't have known. Probably only another writer would notice the skill in which Bohjalian does this.

The trial clips along at a reasonable pace, thorough but without excessive detail, dramatic and suspenseful but without melodrama. By the time the verdict was handed down, I was emotionally invested enough to cry. The question that haunts the reader when the last page is turned: was justice served after all?

I don't recall ever being interested in reading a book's Acknowledgements page. After all, who's interested in "thank you" besides the persons being thanked? But this one I read with the same rapt attention I gave to every other page. I was fascinated to learn who helped bring this story to life and how.

Review by Tess

Title: Midwives (Oprah's Book Club)
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN-10: 0375706771
ISBN-13: 978-0375706776